Image Courtesy of the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University/Photo by Kay Hinton

By SUE D'AURIA, Associate Curator For the first time in many years, ancient Egyptian art comes to West Virginia in this long-term exhibition, with loans of objects from the Michael C. Carlos Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image Courtesy of the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University. Photo by Kay Hinton The focus of the exhibition is a beautifully embellished wooden coffin, with its mummy, of the 21st Dynasty (1075-945 B.C.). During this time in Egypt, the large decorated tombs of earlier periods were replaced by small unadorned chambers containing a number of burials. Important religious texts and scenes that were once placed on tomb walls were now found instead on the exterior of coffins. The Carlos Museum's coffin is a microcosm of funerary religion, with painted scenes of gods and goddesses, symbols of rebirth such as the scarab, and depictions of the deceased as a human-headed ba-bird, which was thought to have the ability to journey between the tomb and the world of the living. The body inside the coffin is thought to be that of a man who was between 20 and 35 years of age at death. State-of-the-art medical technology was juxtaposed with a 3,000-year-old patient when the mummy was brought last year to Emory University Hospital for X-rays and CT-scans. The results of this intriguing investigation is on display in the exhibition. The assemblage has an interesting and rather colorful history. It was one of a group of mummies and coffins purchased in Egypt in the mid-19th century for the Niagara Falls Museum (and Daredevil Hall of Fame), which moved back and forth between the Canadian and American sides of the Falls between 1827 and 1999, when it closed. Through the generosity of the citizens of Atlanta, the purchase price was raised in two weeks in 1999 to acquire the collection for the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University. Included in the collection were coffins and mummies of the 21st Dynasty through the period of Roman rule in Egypt (30 B.C. - 642 A.D.), and one body whose mummification was consistent with royal burials of the 19th Dynasty (1292-1190 B.C.). The collection is now on view at the Carlos Museum. Shabti of the High Priest of Amun, Pinudjem II, Dynasty 21 (1075-945 B.C.), Faience, Huntington Museum of Art The HMA display is supplemented by twenty small objects from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the premier collection of Egyptian art in the United States. Funerary and daily life artifacts that range in date from about 1400 to 500 B.C. include a stela (inscribed tablet), a statuette of a family, and a pot that was excavated in a pit in the Valley of the Kings that held objects associated with the mummification and funeral of King Tutankhamun. The coffin and mummy that have come to Huntington have received a great deal of conservation treatment in order to stabilize and preserve them for their journey. The loan and conservation have been made possible in part by the Museum Loan Network, a national collection-sharing program that facilitates the long-term loan of objects between museums. Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Jacob G. Schmidlapp Fund, Fifth Third Bank Trustee. This exhibition is sponsored by Fifth Third Bank, the Huntington Mall, the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Cabell County Commission, and West Virginia, Wild and Wonderful.